I went out for a run Tuesday morning, determined to make it through one of my longtime four-mile routes for the first time in months (been laid up after surgery).
This route plays out as a series of personal touchstones marking my time in New York. I go through Madison Square Park, crossing into the park at 26th and Madison by the building where I worked for 25 years. Then it’s over to Seventh, and down through Chelsea (we used to live on 20th Street). Then into the Village, turning to go up Charles Street past No. 6 where I rented in a 300 square foot basement apartment for three years (loved that place). To Greenwich Avenue, across 8th Street through NYU where I lived my first summer here. Then up to Union Square, out 16th through Stuyvesant Park, and up First Avenue and back home.
I don’t want to pick favorite routes, because that would mean deciding which was my least favorite, and then dreading when those came up on the schedule. But I’ll say I do look forward to this one. It’s likely the easiest and goes the fastest. It’s flat except for the last couple of blocks, there are no long straightaways, and it takes me through several of my favorite neighborhoods. And there were all of those meaningful landmarks (which had a lot to do with why those neighborhoods are favorites). But with the long layoff, and despite all the walking and treadmill time I’d put in, I’ve regressed a lot in terms of conditioning. Add in that it was already over 80 degrees at 6:45 a.m. when I started out, and I knew I was in for a challenge.
But off I went, slow but picking up the pace a little as the blocks went by.
When I run (and that’s a generous term for how I get around), there’s always something heartening about reaching the halfway point, the point where I go from heading out to heading home. The second half of the journey seems to take noticeably less time and effort than the first, all downhill no matter the slope of the street. As if the center of gravity was in my apartment reeling me in, instead of in the core of the earth holding me down.
The midpoint for that day’s run was the intersection where Charles Street runs into Greenwich Avenue, maybe a hundred feet from that basement apartment I loved. I could see the turning point ahead as I past between the steakhouse 4 Charles and its outdoor dining shed, and the “halfway home” feeling began to build. But there was more to it this time. It wasn’t just a point on the route that awaited me. It was…something. A sign. An offering. A challenge. An opportunity for glory not available to just anybody, only to someone with a true capacity for the heroic, like I was showing just by being out there.
This:
Yes! The mighty Mjölnir! Thor’s hammer! Out on the street, unguarded. No otherworldy nimbus around it. No Asgardian choir offering harmonies that command reverence and awe. Those things only happen in the movies. It was just there, out in the open for anyone to fiddle with, instead of locked up in some secret facility, or, you know, with Thor.
It was there for me.
I took the photo and sent it to my wife. Her response?
“Are you worthy?”
Well, what would you do? I looked around. No Thor in sight. Not even a cosplay Thor (you see them in town occasionally). With the exception of anyone with a street view lurking behind their curtains, waiting to see what would happen, it was all clear. And so I…well, see for yourself:
I thought my wife would be impressed. Maybe hit me with a smattering of wow-faced and heart-eyed emojis. Maybe a little playful scolding for doing something expressly forbidden by the surgeon, under threat of having go through that aggravation all over again.
But no. Her message, slamming into my phone before I could get it back into my pocket, was:
“Get that filthy thing off the dining table!”